


The World Moves For Love

by alicekittridge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: A teaspoon of angst, Character Study, F/F, POV Second Person, Past Tense, Present Tense, Sexual Content, a lot of softness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27332092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: Love takes work.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 148





	The World Moves For Love

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose the cure to writer's block and the longing to write something a tiny bit more explicit is to write in second person POV. Who knew? 
> 
> This is just a little character study of our favorite wee gardener and her love for Dani. 
> 
> \--  
> Title is from my favorite movie, "The Village," where the entire line is: "The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe."

**“L** ove takes work.”

The words told to you by Tamara have haunted you since Dani Clayton speed-walked into your boring life. “Love takes work. Doesn’t matter what form it’s in. It is a hell of a lot of work.” You think back on it and see her not as a sage, but as someone who knew what love was.

And you, poor little you with your wrecked-up home life, thought she would never know love like wise little Tamara. As far as you knew, love led to broken hearts and screaming little brothers and second-degree burns and separation. Fucked up foster care. Trouble in London just to feel some sort of rush. But you felt love, eventually, or if not love then devotion, on the day Tamara led you to the gardening class in Block B, when you buried your hands in damp, dark soil and felt the hardness of twisting plant roots.

Love takes work.

It applied to plants.

It applied to the Wingraves and Hannah and Owen, the first people in your life that didn’t care a fig about your record, only your gardening skills and, eventually, you. People hadn’t been worth it until them, you thought one day in the kitchen, a day you remember as sunny and filled with the smells of vegetable soup and baking bread. This little family, with their own troubles and heartaches and ambitions, was a sign that, perhaps, there were still good people left on Earth.

And Dani. Oh, God, Dani. She’d settled herself at the kitchen table and you hadn’t acknowledged her at all, save for the sound of her American voice drifting from the room and into your ear. The subtle way in which she wove herself into your life was noticeable only in moments. Making the kids garden. Hiding herself by the front door, clearly in a panic, laughing at your humor through shaky breaths. Asking questions of that Scottish fucker at the table. Making a speech about the difference between love and possession, how they’re opposites, how it should be nigh impossible to get them tangled with each other. It impressed you, then, how intelligent she was. And on and on, until you found yourself thinking of her without being prompted. The thoughts themselves were small, too. Little seeds that would grow exponentially over the weeks, blooming red, completely mature by the time Dani leaned forward on your greenhouse bench and pressed her lips to yours, and then completely dead when she jumped away with a frightened gasp. You wiped sunlight from your lips and knew whatever this was had seen too much of it.

You tried, afterwards, to keep to the shade, but the kiss tangled your thoughts, the knot becoming deeper at night. You’d wanted to keep going. You would have if she shared your enthusiasm. On the mornings when it was you in the greenhouse, you almost covered the bench to keep from seeing the ghosts, to keep yourself from thinking you would have pressed Dani against its cushions and asked if she wanted more. The opportunity passed. Slipped through your fingers like soil. But Dani was light, and you could not stop her leaking in, no matter how many blackout curtains you put up on your windows. Dani with her shite coffee and equally as shite Cockney, her patience and concern and genuine love with the kids, her stubbornness to stay with you that, you realized, wasn’t quite stubbornness at all, but _willingness._ Shown to you when you told her your story to gain equal ground, when you showed her the moonflower and she strode up to you and kissed you firmly. _I’m not going anywhere._ You kissed her until you felt your hands stiffening.

“We should… get back,” Dani said. “It’s late.”

You did not miss the implication behind her last words.

The air was heavy on the moonlit walk back. There was a goal you were both seeing, and it lay at the top of the stairs after a sharp left turn. You were giddy with it, laughing on the ascent, pausing outside her door and thinking _Point of no return._

Dani opened the door. “After you,” she said quietly, smiling.

You adopted the posh accent you sometimes used with Flora. “Very chivalrous indeed, madam, inviting a lady first into your bedchamber.” Her laugh was becoming your favorite song. You wanted to keep hearing it.

Dani locked the door. Stood against it while you stood three feet from her, hands in your jacket pockets. You said, “You sure you want to jump?”

“I know you’ll catch me.”

You think this may have been when you felt an inkling of love, when she said that. Or maybe it was in what followed, the slow, syrupy kisses and the clumsy, desire-filled ones. The eager hands pulling at clothes and shoes. How you turned her round so you could take her hair down, setting it over one half-bare shoulder so you might trail your lips across the silky curve of her right shoulder. Or maybe it was later, taking your time tracing every line and curve and feeling hot pokers stab you with every pleasured noise your movements elicited, the sheer elation you felt when, at last, she curled into you. Or maybe it was when she leaned over you and trailed her fingers lightly south and you guided her half-experienced hand between your thighs and breathed, “Don’t get too crazy.”

“Pretty sure I’ve passed that threshold,” she returned, and leaned down to kiss you.

Or maybe it was in the weeks afterward, the dream, the pond, the leaving, the treks across America. It climbed inside you like determined ivy, and wouldn’t let go. It was fully cemented by the time you opened your flower shop, turning greener, and was at its fullest when, at last, you presented Dani with a moonflower and declared you were actually pretty in love with her. You thought back on your life as you let Dani lead you to the overly sweet back room, thinking of all the work that had gone in to get this far, thinking, still, of the work that had yet to be put in. The thought didn’t seem daunting. It was as bright and as warm as sunlight.

You think, if you had the chance, you’d tell Tamara she was right all along.

But it’s good work, you realize, peering at Dani entering your bedroom over the top of your book. It’s got you this far. It’s given you a perfect domestic life. One a lot of people would kill for.

Dani creeps to the bed in sock feet, cupping a mug of something steaming between her hands. Hot chocolate, maybe, spiked with Bailey’s Irish cream—a new favorite of hers—or the peppermint Schnapps she had referred to as “jet fuel.” You return to your book, scooting to the right to make a little more room for her in the bed, hearing her set the mug down on the nightstand, seeing her crawl onto the mattress out of your peripheral vision. _My Fair Lady_ seeps into the room from the parlor.

You almost ask if the movie was boring her, but the question dies on your lips when Dani carefully straddles your lap, being cautious to avoid hitting your book. There’s a lightness about her. And no faraway mask. She is, for tonight, completely Dani.

You set your book aside and fill your hands with the tops of her thighs.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi, love,” you say back.

Dani’s fingers reach out and stroke a lock of your hair. “Is your book so stressful it’s given you more grey?”

“There’s a lot of fucking pining,” you tell her. “Makes me want to skip ahead to the good part.”

“What’s the good part?”

“She finally gets the man.”

Dani hums. Adjusts her posture. It sets a slow burn throughout your body, pleasant as embers. “Sounds a bit like us, don’t you think?”

“A bit.” You take her hand, the one that bears the ring that matches yours, and kiss her fingers. “Although we live in a much more liberal time.”

“Thank God for that,” Dani says, her smile soft, and she closes the space between you, kissing you gently. Her lips move from yours to your cheeks, the corners of your eyes. Over the edge of your jaw, where they follow its path to your earlobe. She nibbles gently, tugs at your earring, and at your sharper intake of breath, the air becomes creamy.

She sits back. You love the way her cheeks get high in their color in moments like this, or when you’ve walked in the snow, or when her smile reaches her eyes. You watch, entranced, as she slips the buttons on her nightshirt free, a stripe of pale, soft skin showing between crimson halves. She doesn’t take it off, just leaves it hanging, and though you already know what’s underneath, there’s still a thrill that flows through you at her leaving things to the imagination.

You want to sit up and kiss her, but by her actions, there’s clearly a plan, and so you lay back against the pillows, placing your hands above your head. _Go on,_ the gesture says. _I’ll take whatever you give me._

Nimble fingers undo the buttons on your flannel shirt, the strokes confident, unlike the ones so long ago, where Dani’s hands shook with the intensity of desire and nervousness mixing heavily within her. Here, though, she knows what she’s doing, smooth action and confidence, parting the sides of your shirt like she would pastry dough—aware it needs to be separated, but without any preamble about the movement. By the look you see cross her face before she leans to kiss your newly exposed skin, she’s pleased you’re wearing nothing underneath. You sigh at the touch of her mouth, gooseflesh rising after her warm breath. All the while want pools low, at first a dull ache, and then an insistent throb when her lips find a nipple. One of your hands finds her hair. You don’t push her. You just need an anchor.

The love she makes to you is gentle. It reminds you of the snow falling outside your window, and of the cozy heat from the radiator, heat that you both gravitate toward after coming in from the bitter cold. It reminds you of the night you’d spilled yourself to her by the moonflower, how she’d stayed after your glass was empty. The word _devotion_ comes to mind, preceded by the word _working._ Working devotion. Which is, you think, clutching Dani closer to you as she tips you over the edge, just about the same as love taking work.


End file.
